


Toussaint

by another_Hero



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Cake, Cake decorating, F/F, Gen, Lou does not respect gluten freedom, this isn't a particularly shippy fic it's really a fkn bakery au lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-07-07 12:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 17,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15907917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: The bakery AU no one wants: a new gluten-free and vegan bakery, Toussaint, is opening up the road from Lou and Debbie's thriving cake shop





	1. Chapter 1

Debbie waited until Lou took the offset spatula off the side of the cake before she said, “Smoke break?”

“Let me get this crumb coat on,” Lou said, and she spread the rim of frosting she’d left around the edge of the cake down onto the top, and she put the cake into the reach-in freezer. “There. Great timing.” It was fairly typical timing; the front of the house often had a lull just before eleven, and they’d been in a few hours by then. They stepped out the back door and sat on a pair of milk crates in the alley.

Neither Lou nor Debbie actually smoked, but they’d been around enough kitchens to know that the only break was a smoke break, and even now that the place was theirs, they’d kept the phrase. “So,” said Debbie, “you’re never going to guess the news we got this morning.”

“Tammy’s pregnant,” said Lou.

Debbie rolled her eyes. “Tammy’s vibrator isn’t that sophisticated.”

“A regular customer that you’ve never told me about before just got a dog.”

“Nope.”

Lou shrugged. “Why am I guessing?”

“That was all your idea. I was going to tell you.”

“Get on with it, then.”

“That place opening up the street, Toussaint? Between Chalmers and Davis? It’s a bakery.”

“Not a cake bakery? It sounds French. Or Haitian, though I’ve never been to a Haitian bakery. I’m sure they have them in Haiti.”

Debbie couldn’t keep her lips from widening a little. “It’s not Haitian,” she said. “It’s not French.”

Lou raised her eyebrows.

“It’s a gluten-free—” Lou chuckled— “AND vegan bakery.”

“Well, that shouldn’t bring much competition for us.”

“No, it’s a win, honestly. No one will care that we don’t sell that stuff. We can just send everyone who’s mad at us over there.”

Lou sipped her coffee. “And our enemies. We might have to make some enemies. It’d be a shame to waste a perfectly good gluten-free bakery.”

“How’s it going with new girl?”

They’d hired the new girl—Rose was her name, and actually, she was a grown woman—just a few days ago, to work part-time, and she was still being trained. She had decent skills on the production side, and she was willing to learn the decorating. But she’d been almost comically nervous in her stage, and while Amita and Lou had thought she would relax after a few days of work, she was still a high-strung mess. Every batter and frosting she’d prepared had come out just fine, and still, Lou had seen her cry twice. When it was just her and Amita, they had an unusually relaxed kitchen, and Lou wasn’t keen on the new vibe. “I’d like to give her a valium,” she answered.

“That’s probably legal. We can definitely force our employees to take whatever drugs we’d find convenient.”

“One thing I know for sure about this country is that workers don’t have rights,” said Lou, raising her mug in a mock toast before finishing her coffee. Debbie snorted. “Amita might snap, though.”

“Call me if she does. I want to watch.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Lou. “Some of us have work to do.” She took off the scarf that she tied around her head in lieu of a headband and redid the knot, and she went back inside and washed her hands. Rose was hovering over what must have been a batch of grapefruit curd on the stove, watching it and stirring, tense as a hummingbird. Amita was lifting the bowl from the Hobart onto a counter and positioning a Cambro beneath it. It was Amita’s day to run the music, so the room was full of upbeat pop by a boy band Lou couldn’t identify. She went back to her bowl of clean chocolate buttercream, the clean offset spatulas, the clean rag, and the measuring cup she filled with clean hot water. The crumb coat would have frozen in place by now, and she pulled the cake out of the freezer, got it frosted, and set it back in to set before adding the decoration. She pulled another set of four round layers from the freezer while it was open, almond this time, and got to work stacking them with plum compote between the layers, protected from soaking into the cake or spurting out the sides by frosting, and getting a coat over it to trap the crumbs. This, the assembly, was Lou’s favorite part of putting together a layer cake, the part that took it from a set of disparate elements to a single majestic, if slightly absurd, unit. A cake bakery wasn’t going to save the world, but she and Amita made beautiful, whole things every day. She swapped the two cakes and added the usual decorations onto the one in the freezer: the plain borders, dots instead of swirls, the dusting of sprinkles on top that would indicate to the front of the house that this was a Birthday Cake cake. Special orders often came with instructions for special decorations, but Lou could do these in her sleep. She set it on a serving tray, marked the bottom of the tray with the pull date, and carried it out to Debbie and Tammy herself.

She wasn’t out there long—just enough time to explain what kind of cake it was to an impressed customer and look over the cold case—but when she got back to the kitchen, it was not the same calm place she had left. Rose had knocked over the strainer as she was pouring the curd into it, and rather than go get a new hotel pan and right the strainer, she had burst into tears. Lou got the pan herself, scraped the sides of the strainer into the old one, set the strainer in the new pan, poured into it all the curd that would fit, and handed Rose the spatula. “Oh,” she said, and she started working the curd through the strainer.

“Next time, you can do this yourself.”

“Yes. Yes. Sorry.”

Amita, cracking eggs at another station, was pointedly _not_ looking in their direction, and Lou made it back to the freezer before looking up at her. Amita didn’t seem to be deriving the same amusement from this that Lou was, though Lou couldn’t blame her; on a busier day, she might have been yelling. That wasn’t the kind of thing she should have needed help with. They hadn’t brought Rose in on Fridays or Saturdays yet, and it didn’t look like they were going to anytime soon. Amita wanted the hours, but Lou wasn’t entirely sure she saw the value in extra help who could only help on slow days. At the moment, Amita didn’t look particularly amused, so Lou went back to her work. “Did you hear?” she said. “That new place up the way, Toussaint. It’s going to be a gluten-free bakery. And vegan. A gluten-free, vegan bakery.”

“Oh?” said Rose.

“When’s it opening?” asked Amita.

“I don’t know. Soon?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh hey daphne

When the place closed, they went to Nine Ball’s. It was too early in the afternoon for a bar to be crowded, but they were all done with work, and Nine Ball’s was right next door, and Lou and Debbie certainly hadn’t ever had any problem with a drink at three in the afternoon if they’d already worked eight hours at that point. Amita was still at work when the place closed, which was a little unusual—Lou knew she wanted the hours, but since she came in first in the morning to bake off muffins before they opened, Lou felt a little bad when she was still around to go to Nine Ball’s. Tammy closed up, as usual, and would join them in a few minutes—Tammy had become remarkably efficient at closing up since Nine Ball’s opened. So Lou and Amita settled at the table while Debbie got their drinks. Somehow, Rose had not been invited out.

“I don’t mean to make you talk about work when we’re not at work,” Lou said, “but do you think she’s getting any better?”

“No,” Amita said flatly.

“Yeah,” said Lou.

Debbie delivered their drinks, and Nine Ball joined her for the moment. They came here more days than they didn’t, and Nine Ball was the kind of person Lou liked to know, which was to say, Nine Ball was chill. She sat down by Amita with a glass of water and asked her how the house hunt was going.

“Not great,” Amita said. “My mom found out, and she’s insisted on going with me to all the showings—she doesn’t actually know anything about houses. And then the whole time she points out how much better her place is and tries to convince me not to move out. It’s a mess. Most of the time I don’t tell her about them, but then she asks where I was.”

“Whew,” Nine Ball said. “And you’re not seeing anywhere you like?”

“Some are okay, but I haven’t put an offer in on anything yet.”

“Hang in there, buddy.” Amita smiled, and then someone came in the door, so Nine Ball jumped up and headed for the counter. “Hey, can I get you anything?”

“Yeah,” said the new customer, someone Lou didn’t recognize. “Do you have any gluten-free beer?”

Debbie spit her drink back into her glass and grinned at Lou.

“I mean, nothing that’s labeled. That shit gets labeled, right?”

Lou was containing her laugh; Debbie leaned across her to Amita and asked, “Did she tell you about this?”

“The new bakery? Yeah.”

 “It should,” said the other customer. “It’s fine, I’ll just have, what kind of cider do you have?”

“Only cider we have is Angry Orchard on tap,” Nine Ball said, and Lou swore she could hear the other customer’s sigh from here as she agreed to that.

“You know,” said Lou, “you’re going to have a new bakery in the neighborhood soon. Your people. The gluten-frees.” Lou’s expression was just politely amused, but Debbie kicked her under the table.

Less expectedly, the other customer arched her eyebrows in practiced surprise. “Where did you hear about that?” she asked.

Lou gestured at Debbie.

“And where did… _you_ hear about that?”

“From a customer at our place,” Debbie said. “We run the cake shop next door.”

The stranger’s eyes widened, and her tone grew at least two shades more effusive than it needed to be. “I’ve heard so much about that place!” she said. “I can’t eat there, of course, but people really seem to love it.”

“Yes, well,” said Debbie, who was clearly looking for an escape route, “so do we, most of the time.”

The other customer held out her hand to shake Debbie’s. “I’m Daphne Kluger,” she said. “I’m the one opening Toussaint.”

Debbie nodded. “Debbie Ocean. This is my partner, Lou.” Lou didn’t shake Daphne Kluger’s hand, but she did flip her hand up in a casual greeting. “When do you open?”

“Next week!” said Daphne. “I really shouldn’t be here, but I just _had_ to get out of that _building_ , you know? Get to know the neighborhood.”

“Well,” said Debbie, gesturing around the empty bar, “don’t let us stop you.”

Lou pressed her lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

“It was great to meet you,” Daphne Kluger said, and—thank God—she crossed to another table.

Nine Ball had just sat down when the door opened again and she had to stand back up. This time, though, it was Tammy, and Nine Ball grinned. “I was wondering if you were going to make it,” she said.

“Yes, well, I haven’t managed to convince them that drinking is more important than closing the bakery,” Tammy said, in a fake-apologetic tone that sounded unnecessarily close to real-apologetic.

Nine Ball laughed. “I didn’t sell her your cider,” she said, gesturing to Daphne Kluger alone at the other table. “It’s the last one. My delivery hasn’t come in yet, so I made her drink Angry Orchard.” She pulled a can of some other cider Tammy liked out of the reach-in behind the counter and handed it to Tammy as she came out of the bar.

Lou had never once seen Tammy pay for a drink at Nine Ball’s, and she didn’t even get flustered by it anymore, just said a shy “Thanks” as she popped the can open.

“If you want any more, though,” said Nine Ball, “it’s the draft for you, too. I’m out now.”

“Oh, I’m driving,” said Tammy. “Also, it’s Wednesday, which in bakery days is basically Monday.”

“Fair enough.”

They all talked until they finished the round, at which point Amita left to face her mother, Tammy left to face Netflix, Debbie went back to the bakery to get some business done, and Lou went home to shower and eventually make them dinner. She was pretty sure Daphne Kluger, from her corner, was watching them as they all got up to leave, but she wasn’t too interested in the concerns of Daphne Kluger, so she held the door open for her team, waved goodbye to Nine Ball, and turned left up the street.


	3. Chapter 3

 “The new place is hiring,” Amita said around the middle of the day.

“Oh?” said Rose.

“Looking to leave us?” said Lou, who was not even slightly worried that Amita might be looking to leave.

“Yeah,” said Amita, “that or I saw the sign when I passed it on my way in this morning.”

“Did we tell you” —Lou gestured at Rose with her spatula— “that we met the owner?”

“No,” said Rose, who was mixing up a batch of ganache and, other than a moment of panic when the cream finally boiled, had not managed to find any crises in the process so far. She kept whisking. “What are they like?”

Lou looked at Amita, who just kind of shrugged. “Overly self-satisfied for a person whose business is statistically likely to fail within the year. Either that or I just thought she was because she doesn’t eat gluten. It might have been a celiac thing.”

“No, she was overly self-satisfied,” said Amita, continuing to separate the eggs she’d set aside. “And just kind of weird? She acted so enthusiastic to meet you and Debbie, instead of just like a regular amount interested. It seemed fake.”

“As you can see,” Lou said to Rose, “we just met her.”

“We definitely have limited data,” Amita agreed.

Rose nodded, and Tammy came into the kitchen.

“Hey,” she said. “Can you…do me a favor?”

“Depends on what the favor is,” said Lou, not looking up from the border she’d started around the top edge of the cake in front of her.

“Nothing illegal,” said Tammy. “It’s just Nine Ball’s birthday tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could make a cake for her. A little one, you know. It doesn’t have to be fancy.”

“Yeah,” said Lou, “we have time for that. What does she like?”

“I don’t actually know,” Tammy said. “It can just be whatever you have extra of, I guess?”

“Okay,” said Lou. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Just wanted to give you some notice.”

“Will do.”

“Thanks!”

“So,” Lou said to Amita when Tammy had left the kitchen, a smirk growing up on her face as she set down the piping bag and started preparing a smaller one to fill with curd, “what should it say?”

“Happy birthday?”

“No,” said Lou, “no, this is a prime opportunity to embarrass Tammy. _Anything_ but ‘Happy birthday’.”

“Happy birthday sexy?”

“Hey, Nine Ball’s going to know we made this. Don’t be a creep.”

“All right, I’m done giving input about this, then,” Amita said. “I’m sure you’ll come up with just the right thing. Please don’t tell me what it is.”

“Well, Debbie will come up with it,” said Lou, “but it’ll be just the right thing.”

So at the end of the day, when Tammy was closing and Debbie was in the office, Lou went to join her, setting a mug of coffee down on the desk. “Very important question,” she said. “But not urgent, if you’re in the middle of something.”

Debbie rubbed her eyes and took the coffee, raising it in brief thanks. “No,” she said, “shoot.”

“Tammy wants us to make a cake for Nine Ball’s birthday. What should I write on it?”

Debbie grinned broadly, and Lou was glad she’d asked. “What an opportunity.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Is it too much to go with ‘I like-like you’?”

Lou’s jaw dropped half an inch. “If she comes to murder me, I’m sending her after you.”

“Like that’d be the worst prank you ever pulled on Tammy.”

“It’s nice,” said Lou. “Straightforward, elegant.”

“Yeah, elegant, that’s just what I was thinking.”

“Too much to cover it with hearts?”

“Not covered. Tastefully decorated. Maybe on the sides? Little hearts on the sides?”

“Oh, that’s perfect—Tammy won’t even see them until we undo the box at Nine Ball’s.”

“And by then, it’ll be too late.”

“Hey, how long until you’re ready to get out of here?”

“Twenty minutes?”

Lou nodded. She’d already gotten her order in, boxed up all the special orders for the next day and filled the cold case, and pulled everything she’d want to have at room temperature in the morning, but there was probably something she could do for twenty minutes. There had been a time when she’d worried about going into business with Debbie. Running a bakery was hardly a low-stress endeavor, and if it was ever between the business and her platonic but central relationship with Debbie, well, there were other jobs, ones where she wouldn’t be responsible for anyone but herself. But Debbie had pointed out that all kinds of married people ran businesses together, and they were way less stressed about each other than all kinds of married people, which may or may not have been true on Lou’s end. Still, it had worked better than she’d thought it would. Debbie loved nothing more than knowing that the place was theirs, and Lou loved nothing more than the satisfaction on Debbie’s face when she told people what they did, and it wasn’t an easy business, but they weren’t in danger of being run out of town anytime soon. They’d survived the impossible first year, and then they’d survived eight more, and they were still going. So Lou tidied the containers of sprinkles and almonds and chocolate chips, chopped up a new bar of chocolate—Rose really should have done that after she nearly used up the last one on ganache, but it was too late to correct her now—prepared Amita’s muffin pans for the morning, and generally made herself busy for the forty minutes that were Debbie’s twenty. Then she took her partner home.


	4. Chapter 4

Lou, at least, hadn’t expected to see Daphne Kluger at Nine Ball’s the next day. She handed the cake to Tammy on the way out the door, and Tammy had thanked her before opening the box. Then she’d looked at it, and then she’d said, “Why are you like this? I can’t give this to her.”

“Please,” said Lou, “Give it to her, get it over with.”

“Lou!”

“Blame me,” Lou said, slipping her arm through Debbie’s. “Blame this one, actually. It was her idea.”

Then they walked over to get drinks, Amita in tow once again; Lou would have to offer to send her home early tomorrow. No, that wouldn’t be practical tomorrow. Maybe she could offer her Wednesday off, tack a day onto her weekend. She knew Amita was trying to buy a house, and she only really came in about an hour before Lou did, often less, but she wanted to make sure her demands, at least, were reasonable. So she was a bit distracted when the Bambi face of Daphne Kluger sprang up in front of her, but she managed to hide it.

“Miss us already?” she said.

“Coincidence,” said Daphne.

“Coincidence? Nine Ball doesn’t sell gluten-free beer.”

Daphne sighed. “I just wanted to know if you have any tips,” she said. “You know, you’ve been around here a long time, you’ve made it work.”

“You want our free business consulting services,” said Lou. “I don’t think we’ll be that much help. Our bakery isn’t really for people doing fad diets.”

Daphne rolled her eyes, quite impressively. “Veganism has existed for decades, and it’s associated with some religions. It’s hardly a fad. And people avoid gluten for all kinds of reasons, including well-documented illnesses.”

“Whatever,” said Lou. “You’re going to need people to seek out your place. It’s a different kind of business, and I’m not on the clock.” She turned away from her. “Happy birthday, Nine Ball.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nine Ball said. “Tammy isn’t helping me out, spreading it all over town.”

“You don’t like birthdays?”

“Oh, I like ’em, but that doesn’t mean it’s anybody’s business.”

“Well,” said Lou, “I’m afraid Tammy’s arranged for cake.”

“Fair enough,” said Nine Ball, “it’s your business.”

They all sat down. Daphne, who had not been invited, joined them.

“So Daphne,” Amita said, “is everything coming along all right? Orders coming in, hiring, all of that?”

“Let’s _not_ talk about that,” Daphne said.

Debbie grinned. “You’ve got to establish your dominance early with those suppliers,” she said.

“I can’t find any bakers. They all keep scheduling interviews and just not showing up.”

Amita nodded. “We had three people flake on stages before Rose.”

“Yeah, that happens,” said Lou.

Then Tammy walked in, and her attention was drawn to Tammy, and more specifically, her attention was drawn to whether Tammy had changed her cake decoration.

“Happy birthday, Nine Ball,” Tammy said, and Nine Ball grinned and gave her a wave. “I just want you to know that _Lou_ is the one who decorated this cake.” That was a no, then. Lou grinned

“On her behalf,” she pointed out. “It was Tammy’s idea. I didn’t even know it was your birthday.”

“Yes, well,” Tammy said, “this was not what I requested. Anyway, I didn’t know what kind of cake you like, and I don’t know what kind of cake this is, except the frosting is chocolate.”

“The cake is yellow,” said Lou. “It’s literally the kind we call birthday cake.”

“Thanks, everybody,” said Nine Ball, but she said it to Tammy, and then she opened it up and saw _I like-like you_ written in white frosting and surrounded by the gold and pink sprinkles they never really used in the bakery, only occasionally for special orders, and let out a loud _ha!_ “Lou! You can’t do this! Don’t you know Tammy is shy?”

Tammy played the part, looking like she was seriously considering running for the door. “I’m not shy,” she said. “I had Lou make you a birthday cake. For your _birthday_.”

“Okay,” said Nine Ball, “I appreciate the cake, but I think we’re going to have to wait on it a sec. I’ll get you a knife, though, you can go at it. Wait, do you even like eating this cake?”

“I can’t,” said Daphne immediately.

“Eh,” said Lou.

“Not really,” said Amita.

“I love it,” said Debbie.

“Oh, I knew you would. All right, well, we’ll be back in a few minutes. If anybody comes in, just sell them beer.” Lou nodded like that was something she was definitely going to do, and Nine ball steered Tammy by the shoulders back behind the bar and through a doorway, far enough that the others couldn’t see them.

“So that’s a no on the knife,” Debbie said.

“You really want a slice of cake?” Lou said. “I’ll go get you a slice of cake from the cake bakery that we _own_.”

“No,” said Debbie, “I want a slice of Nine Ball’s birthday cake. But I guess I want to have it with Nine Ball, for her birthday. When did we get friends? Next time remind me that liking people is time-consuming.”

“You realize you precipitated this.”

“Jesus, guys, stop,” said Amita. “This is a _good_ thing, remember?”

“So how long has this been going on?” Daphne asked, gesturing at the door.

“It hasn’t,” said Debbie. “That was the problem.”

“Since Nine Ball’s opened,” said Lou. “It’s been about a year.”

“Really? Nine Ball doesn’t seem like the type to dawdle.”

“Unfortunately, she’s considerate,” Debbie said with a sigh.

“I feel kind of creepy just waiting for them,” Amita said.

“I’m not leaving yet,” said Lou, “I want to see Tammy’s face when she realizes I put hearts all over the side of the cake.”

“You’re a monster, you know that?”

Daphne grinned. “Are you all always like this?”

“Don’t you have work to do?” said Debbie.

“Gee, thanks. Why do you think I’m here?”

“You’re gonna do great,” Debbie said, patting her hand.

“O- _kay_ ,” Amita interrupted. “Does anybody want another drink?” Daphne turned to her with a smile, maybe even a grateful one.

“That’ll help,” said Lou.

“I should be getting back,” Daphne said, and she stood up from the table.

“Good luck,” Debbie called after her. Then, to Lou, “Hey, we should take this out of the box.”

Lou unfastened the cardboard box around the cake and slid it out from underneath the base. She stepped behind the counter, then out onto the street, looking for a recycling bin. When she got back inside, Tammy was standing by the table and Nine Ball was getting a knife.

“You did not,” Tammy said. She didn’t look amused, which Lou considered a failure of imagination.

“Did not what?” Nine Ball called. Successful, she came over to the table. “Oh, man, you put little hearts all over this cake and everything? Lou, have you ever tried fishing?”

“Excuse me?”

“Seems like you need a hobby. Wait, I’m definitely taking a picture of this first, though.” She pulled out her phone and got the top and the side in one picture. “All right, cake.” She cut slices for herself, Debbie, and Tammy, and laid the knife on the table where it would be easy for anyone else to reach. “Thanks,” she said, again to Tammy, but she caught Lou in the look too. “My sister’s going to be psyched.”


	5. Chapter 5

Rose quit. She’d lasted about two weeks, and Lou was ready to figure she just couldn’t hack it; kitchen work, even the relatively mellow work in their kitchen, wasn’t for everyone. She didn’t make a show of disappointment or anything. Rose was hardly the first person she’d seen dissolve in tears over a stove, and plenty of them gave up in the end.

What she was _not_ expecting was to learn that Rose had taken a baking job at Toussaint. “It’s not exactly,” said Rose, “what I mean is, I know it’s gluten free and everything, and I like the food here much better. But Daphne’s offering full-time. You understand.”

Lou did understand, and anyway. the shortest she’d ever lasted in a job was just three hours—though in that case, the kitchen manager had been handsy, and she’d broken a glass on him on her way out, and when she arranged a new job for herself that very afternoon, she’d ended up meeting Debbie and staying until she realized she’d been in the same kitchen for six years. Still, two weeks wasn’t anything for the record books. It helped that she wouldn’t miss Rose. She told her they could manage without her for the rest of her shift that day, and then she paused to sigh her relief as Rose’s constant worry walked out of the kitchen with her. “It’s a little annoying,” she said to Amita, magnanimously.

“I’m about to send Daphne a fruit basket.”

“It’s a little annoying that we spent two weeks with her for nothing.”

“Has Daphne ever run a kitchen before?”

“I know precisely zero facts about the professional background of Daphne Kluger.”

“I can’t tell whether I’m underestimating her because she’s the hottest person I’ve ever seen and she’s just acting incompetent to be, like, self-effacing or whether I’m estimating her exactly right.”

“She doesn’t strike me as the self-effacing type.” Lou finished frosting the two dozen (plus two in case) cupcakes that had been ordered for this afternoon and retrieved a bucket of purple sprinkles, which she dropped onto half of each cupcake. “And she doesn’t seem prepared. But most people aren’t, really, in her position.”

Lou carefully boxed the two dozen cupcakes and plated the two extras. She carried the boxes to the front of the house with the order sheet on the top and let Debbie know that they were there. “If something happens to any of them, we have two extras in the walk-in,” she added, “and if not, you can sell those.” It was their usual approach to cupcake orders, but they didn’t have cupcake orders so often that it went unspoken.

“Thanks,” Debbie said. “Hey, did I just see Rose leave?”

Lou looked up to make sure there weren’t any customers at the counter. “Yeah,” she said, “big news, she quit.”

“Big news? That’s about the least surprising thing ever to happen in this bakery.”

“Yeah,” said Lou, “I’m not exactly losing sleep over it. But you know why she quit?”

“Because she was miserable literally all of the time?”

“She got a full-time job,” said Lou.

“Oh, really? Good for her.”

“With,” Lou said, giving a truly majestic raise of her eyebrows, “someone really desperate.”

“Who?” said Debbie, and when Lou just kept grinning, she said, “Dude, who? Was it Claude?”

“Desperate enough for a baker to hire Rose full-time, even after how awful she must have been in the stage. And despite her lack of… _specialized experience_.”

“No.” Debbie’s smile was pure schadenfreude. “No way.”

“Have I ever lied to you?” Lou said, but then she tilted her head toward the door, where a customer had just come in.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Debbie. “Go do your job.”

 

The next time they made it to Nine Ball’s, Rose and Daphne were both there, together, with a kid in a beanie that Lou didn’t recognize. She shared a look with Debbie and went to sit down with Amita while Debbie and Tammy went to the bar. She and Amita spent a lot of their time together, and conversation came easily, so they definitely did not need the company of Daphne Kluger and her crew, but for Daphne Kluger and her crew, that didn’t seem to be a priority. Lou looked up at them when they sat down. Amita was a little nicer. “Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” said Daphne, like they were friends. “You know Rose, of course, and this is Constance. She works in the front of the house.” Then she _sat down_ , and she invited Rose and Constance to take seats as well.

Lou gave a nod of greeting but didn’t introduce herself. She didn’t have a problem with Constance; she had a problem with Daphne Kluger interrupting her drinks and starting an introduction she couldn’t finish.

“I’m Amita,” said Amita. “This is Lou. She and Debbie” —she gestured— “own the bakery next door.”

“Nice,” said Constance. “That place is good. I got five slices from there the other day. They were fucking delicious. I didn’t like the grapefruit one, though.” The grapefruit one was a white cake with grapefruit curd between the layers and white chocolate buttercream, and Lou didn’t exactly like it either—the white cake they made was one of the better ones she’d had, and it was sturdy enough to cut each round into three in order to make a cake with six thinner layers instead of their usual four, but no one would ever convince Lou that white cake was for more than looks. People did love the look of it, though.

“Thanks,” said Lou. Debbie brought the drinks, bless her, and Lou took a long sip. It earned her an eyebrow raise from Debbie, which she returned, accompanied by a glance at their new seatmates. “This is Constance. She doesn’t like the white and pink cake.”

“But like, all the other ones were incredible,” Constance said. “Seriously. I might have died.”

“Well, I hope you didn’t,” said Debbie.

“You work at Toussaint?” asked Tammy. Lou was trying hard _not_ to invite their guests into this conversation, but only Debbie seemed to be on the same page as she was, so the most likely outcome was Tammy and Amita getting mad at her. She considered changing her approach. She looked at her partner, who was attending studiously to her glass.

“Yeah,” said Constance, “I’m a barista.”

“Nice,” said Tammy. “I work front of house at Blue Rabbit.”

Constance gave an acknowledging nod. “Do you like it?”

Tammy chuckled. “I do,” she said, “and also my bosses are here. I really do, though.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah. So when do you guys open?”

“Oh, today,” said Constance.

“That’s why we’re all here,” said Daphne. “Celebrating our opening.”

Debbie was looking up now, Lou noticed, and she grinned. Just couldn’t help her curiosity.

Fortunately, Tammy continued with the questioning. “Oh, how’d it go?” she asked, in a tone of excitement that suggested of _course_ it must have gone well.

“It was good,” Daphne said. “People came in all day, and they bought stuff, so I call that a win for day one.”

 “That’s great.”

“Yeah,” said Daphne. “I think there’s really a need for something like this around here.”

Lou watched Debbie react to this, and all she had to do was not laugh.

“We’re still working some things out,” Daphne continued, “but that’s normal, right? We’ll figure it out.”

“Definitely normal,” Amita agreed. “Have you done this before?”

“God no,” Daphne said. “And I’m never doing it again.” Debbie smirked.

“It gets easier,” Amita said. “If you make it.” She didn’t say it cruelly; surely Daphne knew by now that most people didn’t.

“Yeah,” Daphne said. “Thanks.”

And then she and her whole crew were just still there. She’d had the chance to show off, to be reassured, whatever she had come to them for, and now she’d gotten it, but she was still across the table from Lou, looking genuinely, ridiculously hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear 2 u they will end up friends though I'm not 100% sure how


	6. Chapter 6

They all went to Toussaint the next day, of course. When Amita and Lou had a moment with nothing in the oven, they tossed their aprons on a table and retrieved Tammy—they tried to invite Debbie along as well, but she insisted they couldn’t close the bakery in the middle of the day for a field trip. “Just let customers take what they want and leave the money on the counter,” Lou suggested.

“Uh-huh. Go on and you can tell me all about it.”

“I’ll bring you back something nice, baby,” Lou said.

“Yeah, you better not.”

Constance recognized them when they walked into the bakery. “Hey!” she said. “Fellow bakers!” She was making a drink for a person standing in line; there were also two people sitting down at a table. “You want me to get Daphne? Rose?”

“Oh, no,” Tammy said, “we just wanted to come see the place.” The small space was a cliché, but a pretty one: wood walls and wood floors, white surfaces, a few plants. The cups and dishes were white and wide. The chalk on the chalkboard menu was pink. The lightbulbs were bare. Everything was on trend and having exactly the effect it was meant to. The pastries—well. There was a tart covered with fresh blueberries, but all the blueberries were piled at messy angles, and the edges of the crust weren’t even at all. A set of thumbprint cookies had jam spilling out their sides. Some drizzled chocolate was unevenly thick. Every single instance of piped frosting looked like it had been done by a child. Lou was sure that most of the pastries weren’t good, but everyone would be better off if Rose, if it was Rose, learned to finish her work.

 “Here you go,” Constance said, handing the drink to the customer. “Hey, so, do you want any coffee or anything?”

Lou gestured to the case, though she had no intention of buying any of the pastries. “What’s good?”

“I mean,” Constance said, “you all eat everything, right? I don’t know why you’d like anything here.”

“Constance,” Daphne said—Daphne was there now— “please don’t send away the customers. How are all of you? Do you want some coffee?”

“We should be getting back,” Lou said. “No rest for the wicked.”

“Sure,” said Daphne, “well, you can see everything here. Quartz tables, which I love. These floors are the original. Want to see the kitchen?”

“That’s okay,” said Amita. Lou’s lips twitched.

But Daphne led them through a doorway without making any noise about how they were walking through the doorway.

She didn’t seem to be the kind of person who acknowledged refusals, and Lou wasn’t in enough of a hurry to fight back, so they went into the kitchen, stopping for Daphne to introduce them to the dishwasher, John. “Oh, sure,” Amita said, “ _they_ can have a dishwasher.” Everyone at Blue Rabbit wished for someone to be hired to wash dishes, but they managed just fine doing it themselves. Debbie had thought about what hours they would want and decided it just didn’t make much sense; she also claimed it kept them honest, but then, Tammy was the one who closed the front of the house, so she was the one stuck with any dishes Debbie didn’t wash.

Rose, when she saw them, jumped, blushed, and then said, “Oh, hello.”

The kitchen was beautiful, Lou had to admit. The front of the house was cozy, though not cramped, but the kitchen was spacious, with plenty of different work surfaces and hooks for mixer attachments. She wasn’t sure it had been entirely thought through by someone who had worked extensively in professional kitchens—she only saw one speed rack, somehow, and one dish tub, which wasn’t on a cart, and a few other details that would drive them up a wall before too long. But the _room_. All the _work space_. “You’re hoping to run mostly on orders?” Lou asked Daphne; the front of the house was too small to merit this much kitchen. 

“Yeah, once we get established. It’s nice for people to have a place to come out to, but I figure we’ll be the only place around where people with dietary needs can get treats for things like birthday parties.”

Lou nodded. “That’s a good call. Are you doing any wholesale business?”

“I’m working on it. Getting in touch with the grocery stores, places like that. It’s easier to have those meetings now that we’re open.”

“Nice.” She was being sincere; it was a good approach, and Daphne wasn’t wrong that she was filling a gap. “You’ll need a bigger staff.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Daphne said.

“Anyway,” said Lou, “we really should be getting back. Cake never sleeps.” Amita rolled her eyes, but she was already heading for the doorway into the front of the house, calling “Corner!” before she walked through. Daphne hugged them—Lou actually looked around in confusion, not sure how Daphne Kluger had come to the impression that it would be in any way reasonable for her to hug Lou—and then they walked the block and a half back down the street to their own bakery, which may have been less cute but was far more functional.

Debbie looked at Lou desperately when they came in, and when Lou walked by, grinning, without stopping to get a report—she had important work to get to, after all—Debbie just followed her into the kitchen. She didn’t say anything; she just sat on the counter. Lou alone could have won that game of chicken, but alas, Amita didn’t have it in her. “It was cute,” she told Debbie while she peeled bricks of room-temperature butter and let them thunk into a bowl. “The place was.”

“What do you mean, the _place_ was?” Debbie had a grin on, lips together: she knew that meant something wasn’t, and she was ready for it. Lou wouldn’t have said another word, but Amita, well, Amita was weak.

“The case was pretty sad.”

“Of course it’s sad.”

“It was pretty straightforward stuff, though,” Amita said. “Things that just didn’t look very well made.”

“Don’t the gluten-free people like that?”

“I don’t think that when you swear off gluten you do it because you want your pastries to be ugly,” Amita said.

“Oh, _Amita_ , with the _comeback_ ,” Debbie teased.

“Don’t you have something, I don’t remember, a job?” Lou asked Debbie

“Never heard of it.”

“I bet you haven’t.”

Lou had to pull a tub of curd from the walk-in then; it would have been a more dramatic exit if she hadn’t emerged again just a moment later. They kept the kitchen itself pretty cool most of the time, so as not to harm the frosting, so Lou tried to spend as little time in the refrigerator as possible. But when she came out, Debbie, apparently satisfied, was calling goodbye to Amita (and Amita only) and returning to work, despite herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to put this up on the days until kind of late in them. Sorry to the uh probably three people who read this lol


	7. Chapter 7

“You’re going to love this,” Amita said. “I mean, you’re going to think you hate it at first, but actually you’re going to love it.”

“Love what?”

“Daphne texted me last night. I don’t know how she got my phone number. Maybe Rose? I don’t know how _Rose_ got my phone number. Anyway. She wanted me to come help figure stuff out. Apparently Rose is her only baker—I don’t know, I guess Daphne isn’t really working in the kitchen? Or maybe she’s baking too, but she just doesn’t know how to _do_ anything, like the business stuff. Tracking inventory, ordering. So she _texted_ me and she asked me to _help_ her.”

“Why does she have to come after my bakers?”

“Proximity? Obviously I’m not leaving here to work in a fucking gluten-free bakery. But okay, so I told her I was happy to help her once a week on one of my days off, because you know, saving for a house, but that it’d be twenty-five bucks an hour.”

Lou laughed. At a bakery the size of Daphne’s? A brand-new one that hadn’t yet made a name for itself? Constance and Rose might not make half that.

“I should have asked for more,” Amita said. “She really needs to learn how to do it. She said sure.”

“Okay, you’re right, I do love that.”

 After the weekend, Lou asked Amita how it had gone.

“It was a mess,” Amita said, immediately and unequivocally.

“That was a given,” said Lou, who was mixing up bowls of brightly-colored frosting to decorate a cake with balloons. She didn’t have the same ill will for Toussaint since she had been inside, but she wasn’t actively pulling for them either, and she’d seen enough to know that there was no person there who was actually aware enough to run a bakery without some serious struggle. “I was looking for details.”

“All right, well, imagine Rose, but responsible for the whole day’s production, and also she’s never done gluten-free baking before. I mean, you saw how their stuff looked, we’re ignoring that. Just focus on the vibe that would produce in the kitchen.”

“Do they even put out enough product to keep a baker full-time?”

“Once she knows what she’s doing? I doubt it. But you know, she’s hoping to get a lot of orders once people know they’re there. Anyway, Daphne’s going for the tyrant approach, which isn’t making her staff any more knowledgeable.”

Lou rolled her eyes. She’d worked for plenty of owners and kitchen managers who figured their own stress was the best way of motivating their employees. It wasn’t just altruism or a strongly-developed sense of chill that had made her take a different approach. “I’m guessing that’s not how you said it to her.”

“No way. I just told Rose what to do.”

“Efficient. Respectable.”

“We went over some ways to make things look nicer too. I mean, I think I was supposed to help them set up a flow of communication so they didn’t run out of anything, but you saw the case.”

“They should be paying you double.”

“And she liked me. I’m going back next week.”

“Charmed the devil, have we?”

Amita rolled her eyes. “Her business is going to fail, but you know we’ve all worked for at least three people who were worse. Anyway, I didn’t _charm_ her, I just knew how to do my job.”

Having prepared her piping bags, Lou took a swig of coffee and started to fill them with the colored frosting. “Don’t sell yourself short,” she joked. “I’m sure you can do both.”

“I mean,” said Amita, “at least she’s finding people to help her with what she doesn’t know?”

A week later—a week in which Daphne had not been seen at Nine Ball’s—Amita reported, “She’s improving, actually. Or maybe she was having a good day. But I only saw her yell once.”

“Amazing.”

“I mean, it’s a low bar, but it’s still good. She’s kind of nice when she isn’t so scared, I think.”

“And the actual work?”

“They…were doing okay. We got to refine some of the stuff we worked on last week.”

“I’m pretty sure you could make this bakery into anything you wanted.”

“They couldn’t afford me,” Amita laughed.

“It sounds like they’re getting their money’s worth.” Lou really was proud of Amita; she’d never shown any sign of wanting to open her own place, but she did everything in the kitchen as well as Lou or better. It was a pleasure to work with someone so competent, and it was a pleasure to work with Amita, specifically. She was glad to see other people celebrating her skill. And if Daphne could chill out a bit, well, maybe there would be some advantages to having another bakery just up the road. She really would have to talk to Debbie about putting in a small daily order.

Daphne came to Nine Ball’s the next day when just Lou and Debbie were there. When she looked at their table, her face registered disappointment. “No Amita today?” she asked.

“She starts before I do,” Lou said. “I have to send her home sometimes.”

“It seems like she works a lot,” Daphne said.

“She’s saving for a house. And I hear she’s helping you out.”

“Oh, she’s been a _lifesaver_ ,” Daphne said, and while Lou thought this sounded a bit excessive, Daphne seemed sincere. “You’re so lucky to have her.”

“You’re not wrong,” said Lou.

“And she’s so _mellow_ ,” said Daphne. “I swear my blood pressure drops the minute I see her.”

Lou chuckled. This was true of Amita right up until you crossed her. “She must like you.”

Daphne blushed. Daphne _blushed_. Lou could feel Debbie looking at her. “Anyway,” Daphne said, “I’d better go get a drink.”

Lou met Debbie’s gaze then.

“Did she—”

“I had no idea,” said Lou.

“I hope she doesn’t make a move while Amita’s still working for her,” Debbie said. “Should we warn her?”

“Warn Daphne or Amita?”

“Amita, obviously.”

“I don’t know,” said Lou. “It doesn’t seem like she’s in immediate danger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Amita in canon bc she is Ultra Competent (but also because her dresses are cute af)


	8. Chapter 8

It turned out she wasn’t in immediate danger. When Amita came back that Wednesday and Lou asked how her time at Toussaint had gone, she said, “Good,” and she also said that she had finished up there. “I just, I think they’ve got the basics, and it didn’t make sense to have them keep paying me that much when they’re managing okay.”

“Was that your idea or theirs?”

“Mine,” said Amita. “Don’t get me wrong, it was a good gig, but I like my weekends, too.”

Lou nodded. “How did Daphne feel about it?”

Amita shrugged. “She agreed. I mean, it was pretty reasonable. And then she asked if I wanted to hang out.”

Lou, who was piling frosting onto the top of a cake that would eventually cover the entire thing, waited for Amita to continue.

“I mean, I was kind of like, didn’t you just start a bakery? Like, do you have even six minutes of free time and energy? But that’s her call, I guess. We’re going to an art festival? I had no idea it was happening, but leave it to Daphne to keep up on art festivals while she’s opening a business, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t have taken her for the art type.”

“I bet she has friends in it.”

“Ah.” Daphne seemed like the type to make sure you knew she had friends in things. Lou went in for her real question. “So is this a friend hangout or a date?”

“Lou!”

“That means it’s a friend hangout?”

“Well, I _thought_ so, until right _now_.”

“What makes you think otherwise?”

“You fucking saying it, Lou.”

“Do you not want it to be a date?”

“I at least want to know.”

“ _Do_ you want it to be a date?”

“I just want to know!”

“You could always ask,” Lou said with a smirk.

There was not a chance that Amita would text Daphne to ask whether they were dating, and sure enough, she shuddered and shook her head.

“If you just go, you’ll find out eventually.”

“That’s really, really not helpful,” Amita said.

“You just have to be ready. If she wants to hold hands, are you going to do it? If she wants to kiss you, are you going to do it?” Lou hadn’t stopped rotating the cake in front of her as she spoke, busy getting the frosting on the sides smooth, and she’d only been talking with half her attention. But now before squaring off the top edge, she looked up to see Amita’s reaction.

It was a reaction of substantial distress. “ _I_ don’t know!” Amita protested.

“You say that like somebody else does,” said Lou, and she bent back down to finish the top of her cake. This one would have a thin layer of preserves over the top frosting, so she didn’t worry too much about making the top of the cake seamless. Once it was smooth, she moved the cake to a cleaner tray and picked up the right piping bag to start the border.

She’d done all of this before she heard Amita say, “I guess yeah?”

“You guess?”

“You disapprove?”

“Amita, I have no business approving or disapproving anyone you might want to date.”

“What if I want your opinion? And what if I want to talk about this all day?”

“As long as all the production gets done,” said Lou. “ _You_ can talk about it all you want.”

“ _Lou_ ,” Amita whined.

“Well, first of all, if you don’t know that you _want_ to bone her, you probably shouldn’t.”

“Ew, okay, tone it down. Nobody said anything about that.”

“Point stands.”

“Anyway, maybe I do want to. That’s the problem.”

Lou sighed, put this cake in the fridge, removed another, and went to get the melted dark chocolate they kept on top of the stove to write with. This cake was a special order, and the message was going to be “SKELETONS.” All-caps had been specified, with sprinkles above and below the words. Lou was pretty sure she preferred not knowing the context. It was probably disappointingly dull—the name of a band or something. “What do you like about her?” she asked, not because she particularly cared—she was Amita’s boss, not her sister—but because she was bored. She tested the chocolate on a strip of parchment; it ran smooth.

“I mean,” Amita said, “she cares a lot about what she’s doing, even if she doesn’t always handle it…ideally.”

“Okay.”

“I bet she cares about the other things in her life too.”

“Okay.”

“Also she’s fucking gorgeous.”

“No question.”

“I’m probably not going to have to decide this anyway.”

“Do you _want_ to have to decide this?”

“I don’t want to have to decide anything!”

Lou chuckled. She retrieved a flat pink box, centered the cake on its base, and assembled the box around the cake. She attached the order sheet and set the cake in the walk-in. Then she retrieved the previous cake and a container of raspberry preserves, which she spread thinly over the top. This one was a special order too, though the writing would be in white chocolate instead. The white chocolate from on top of the stove was clumpy when she tested it, so she made a new little bag out of parchment paper, taped it closed, set a couple feves inside, and put it into the microwave to melt them.  

“I mean,” Amita said while the microwave was running, and Lou mildly accepted that this conversation was going to continue, or at least one side of it was. “I mean. Obviously I want to spend more time with her. I agreed to go.” She paused. “I want her to think about me.”

“Please don’t tell me how.”

“Ugh, shut up.”

“I’m just saying, this is getting a little personal for work talk.”

“You know my solution to that will just be to talk about it at Nine Ball’s.”

“She’ll be there. If you go to Nine Ball’s and you want Daphne not to be there, she’ll be there. It’s Newton’s third law.”

“Newton’s third law is that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”

“Yeah, no.”

Amita snorted. “Whatever,” she said. “I’m not going to make a move, but if she makes a move, I’m going to go with it.”

“All right,” said Lou. “Now that you’ve decided, she isn’t going to.”

“I’m a little offended by that.”

“Why? It’s not about _you_. That one’s Murphy’s law.”

“God, everybody has a law. Do you have a law?”

“Debbie is hungry.”

Amita nodded. “That she is.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Monday and I can't stop refreshing Twitter but Lou and Debbie are on a smoke break (it's not Monday in the world of the fic; the bakery is closed on Mondays in the world of the fic)

“You want to go smoke?”

Lou looked around her. They had a big wedding this weekend—a three-tiered cake, where the six-inch, nine-inch, and twelve-inch tiers were all different flavors, and they wanted custom decoration, and they also needed a set of vegan cupcakes, though Amita was taking care of those all the way through decoration. But she was the boss, and she wasn’t being paid by the hour, and the tiers of the wedding cake were done by now but not yet ready to deliver, and her sitting outside with Debbie for ten minutes wasn’t going to make any significant interruption in her day.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I really do.”

Debbie frowned at her as they stepped outside. “You okay?”

“Fine. Just, you know, three tiers. And three other orders.”

“Let me know if you want to order any food in.”

Lou nodded. Debbie wasn’t much of a caretaker, especially when they were at work, but Lou had never met anyone better at ordering food in. “We’ll see how late it goes. I think we’ve actually prepped pretty well for this, so crossing fingers that we pulled enough frosting, but it could end up being pretty quick. I mean, then I’ll have to take it out there and put it together, but that’s a given.”

Debbie nodded. She understood that wedding cakes were particularly stressful. She rarely even got to see them; Lou assembled them on site, as a rule.

“You know,” said Lou, and she was sure Debbie did know, and she was sure Debbie was not going to feel like talking about it, “these people wanted gluten-free cupcakes too.” They’d never made any gluten-free cakes, and they didn’t keep any specialized ingredients; if anyone wanted to add something gluten-free to an order, they made brownies with the almond flour they also used in the almond cake, but it came with all kinds of disclaimers about the potential for cross-contamination.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got the itch,” Debbie said. “You know we can’t stock everything to make gluten-free layer cakes.”

“You know that isn’t what I’m getting at.”

Debbie sighed. “I know. We should.”

“And we’re both talking about not just for events, right?” Lou said. “I mean a small wholesale order every day, and also going to them for things like this.”

“We’re talking about the same thing,” Debbie said. “I know we should. But didn’t you say their stuff didn’t look very good? I definitely don’t want to serve anything for a wedding order that looks bad.”

“Yeah, I agree. But Amita’s been working with them, and if we did a daily order, we’d see for ourselves.” That was a real concern of Lou’s as well; it was one thing to have a couple cupcakes in the case every day that were clearly labeled as the product of another bakery; it was something else entirely to show up at a wedding with a product that didn’t match the others—though she supposed she and Amita could do the actual frosting application if necessary—and didn’t look professional. But they should at least make a start. “Or, you know, you could just go over there and check on how they’re looking these days.”

Debbie rolled her eyes and certainly didn’t agree to take a field trip up the street. “I don’t want to do this. You know that, right?”

Lou, of course, knew this. But she also knew, because Debbie had mentioned it, that people were coming into the bakery with bags from Toussaint, which meant people coming to their bakery wanted food from Toussaint, which meant it wasn’t just a desire to support a weird neighbor that should make them put in a small daily wholesale order. “I’m not sure that’s how we should make our decision in this case,” she said instead, mildly.

“You don’t have to rub it in.”

“That’s a yes?”

“I already said we _should_ do it. What more do you want from me?”

“Well, I want you to do it, obviously,” Lou said. She wished for a moment that they actually smoked on their smoke breaks; she would have used it to punctuate her sentence just now.

“Can’t you?” said Debbie. “You’re so good at that stuff.”

“Me? You’re the one who does the front of house ordering.”

“Not that stuff. The Toussaint stuff. They know you. I think maybe they like you.”

“Rose? You think Rose likes me?”

“Not her. The hot one. The owner. Daphne.” Lou didn’t buy for a minute that Debbie had forgotten Daphne’s name.

“What’s wrong with her?” Lou asked. It was a bit of a disingenuous question, since Daphne rubbed her the wrong way as well. Something about the overly self-satisfied attitude on a person who clearly had no idea what she was doing.

“I mean, I don’t love the competition.”

“Bullshit. You’ve never _met_ a competition you didn’t love. Anyway, I don’t think we’re targeting the same customers.”

“Fine. I don’t like that we found out about her by coincidence. When she was moving onto our street, she should have introduced herself. She should have come by. But we found out from a customer, and we met her in a bar, and she still hasn’t even _been_ here since we met. I mean, she should be the one soliciting a daily order from us!”

“So you don’t like her because she isn’t friendly, and the way you’re dealing with that is by being unfriendly? Just wanted to check.”

“I don’t _like_ her because she’s acting like she doesn’t care about the place where her business is, and also I think she isn’t making good decisions.”

“She’s scheduling meetings with grocery stores about wholesale business,” said Lou. “She’s just not scheduling them with the bakery up the street that would only buy four cupcakes a day.”

“Okay, I’ll take back the thing about the decisions if you agree that that just reinforced my main point.”

“Yeah, tell me, does every business in the neighborhood have to care about it, or just hers? Is it as bad if an office up the street gets their baked goods from a supermarket instead?” This wasn’t exactly fair, but Debbie wasn’t going to call her out on a bad analogy.

“A bakery is a meeting place!”

“We literally met her in a local bar,” Lou said. “She was trying to get to know the neighborhood.”

“And it doesn’t bug you that she went to Nine Ball’s and still hasn’t come here?”

Lou shrugged. “She goes to Nine Ball’s to drink. She’s not going to come here to eat cake.”

“It just bothers me.”

“While I’m sure that the silent treatment is the best way to cope with feeling left out,” said Lou, “have you considered just inviting her over?”

“Have I considered? Yeah I’ve fucking considered. Don’t talk to me like that.”

Lou grinned. “I’ll invite,” she said. “You’ll negotiate.”

Debbie rolled her eyes.

“But you know,” she said, “in order to go in really prepared, you might want to take a walk down to Toussaint and look in their case.” When Debbie glared, Lou just grinned. “You know you love to have all the facts.”

“Do you know I don’t like you at all?”

“Well, who can blame you, babe? But I’m calling this afternoon, soon as I get back from delivering the wedding cake.”


	10. Chapter 10

“How was the art show?” Lou asked first thing Sunday morning, while she was still making up her list for the day.

“Oh, you know,” said Amita from over by the oven, “it sure was full of art.”

“That bad?”

“These things are always bad,” Amita said. “Nobody goes to art street fairs for quality shit.”

“You know that’s not what I was asking about.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Amita. “The art-viewing to makeout ratio was extremely tame.”

“Tame by my standards or tame by your mother’s?”

“You and my mother are both people who do no making out, so maybe it wasn’t actually tame to either of you.” Amita wasn’t looking at Lou; she was looking at the scones while she drizzled icing on them.

“Look at you with the dis,” Lou said.

“It’s not a dis. There’s nothing wrong with you and Debbie.”

“I meant comparing me to your mother. Don’t get me wrong, I think your mother’s lovely. But coming from you, it doesn’t seem like a compliment.”

Amita rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, maybe she does make out with someone and you just don’t know about it.”

“I don’t think so. My dad left her enough to live on. I think she has better things to do with her time.”

“But you don’t! Come on, story.”

“Let me run these out first.”  

Lou prepared her station and looked up when Amita got back. Amita flipped through the recipe binder and started talking when she found what she was looking for. “Okay,” she said, “so we walked around the park, and that was fine, but it was really hot, so we didn’t stay that long, and then we went to get some lemonade.”

“She drinks lemonade?” Lou was pulling out cakes to slice off their tops and slice them in half.

“Don’t be a dick. She runs a _bakery_ , Lou, she eats sugar. Anyway, and there’s a really cute restaurant near there, you know Anna’s?” Lou nodded. “She didn’t, so I said let’s go there, and we sat around for a while talking—it turns out she just moved to town, which I guess makes sense, I mean, none of us had met her.”

“What brings her here?”

“She and Constance were friends before? I don’t know, she was living in LA, and some shit went down at her last place, I mean, I don’t think I could recount the details, but she did _not_ leave on good terms. So I think Constance just happened to mention that the place was for sale, and Daphne wanted to get out of town. Anyway, the point is, we went for some lemonade, and then she offered to walk me home, since I’d walked to the park, which was super nice, and then she asked on my porch if she could kiss me and I had to be like, my mom is definitely watching, so can we maybe…walk around the block?”

Amita was giggling, but Lou laughed out loud. “And how long did it take you to walk around the block?”

“I don’t know, half an hour? It was still really hot outside.”

“So what now? Is the ball in your court?”

“I mean,” said Amita, “Daphne doesn’t strike me as the type of person to leave the ball in someone else’s court, but I’m trying to come up with something.”

Lou set the cake layers she’d just sliced in the freezer and grabbed a new pair of baked rounds. “You sound like the trying isn’t very successful?”

“I’m too boring, Lou. I don’t do anything. I don’t go anywhere. I can’t invite her over because I live with my mother.”

“A drink doesn’t work? Dinner doesn’t work?”

“I don’t want her to _know_ I’m boring.”

“She invited you to an art fair in the park. She hasn’t set the bar that high. Anyway, better now than later.”

“We’ve already been to Nine Ball’s together like, I don’t know, a lot of times.”

“Go somewhere else, and maybe consider not taking all of your coworkers with you.”

Amita rolled her eyes. “I never would have thought of that.”

“I try to help,” Lou said magnanimously. “You do want to go out again, right? You made it sound like you had a good time.”

“I did. I do. She’s really…” Amita blushed. “If I say she’s really attentive, when it’s one-on-one, does that make me sound like I just want somebody to lavish attention on me? Because she’s really attentive, and fuck it, maybe I do.”

“I think wanting someone to pay attention to you is a pretty low bar for a first date, actually, but I might not be the authority on the subject.”

 “That’s not what I meant, though. Attentive isn’t the same thing as just paying attention. Daphne’s…”

“Jesus, we’ve gotten to the gushing and stopping mid-sentence to stare into space stage already? Like three days ago you didn’t even know whether you wanted to date her.”

“Look, don’t get me wrong, I _know_ she’s not perfect. I’ve seen her yelling at her staff. I don’t want to be naïve about how she handles stress badly and isn’t always kind just because she’s pretty, but like…”

“She’s pretty.”

“And she’s kind, and she’s funny. With me.”

“Oh, no,” said Lou, “do I have to do the thing where I tell you what she said about you when you weren’t there?”

“She said something about me when I wasn’t there? And you didn’t tell me _already_?”

“Yeah, because I’m not in middle school.”

“Fuck off. What did she say?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Something about how she found you calming. And gorgeous, obviously.”

“What am I supposed to do with that? I can’t be calming all the time. I wonder whether she still feels that way when I’m freaking out on the date about whether or not it’s a date.”

“Well, she kissed you at the end of it, right? I’m gonna go with yes, clearly she did.”

“That seems like such an unreasonable expectation! There’s no way that will stay true when we get to know each other.”

“Maybe not.”

“You aren’t helping.”

“Why not? Your whole relationship doesn’t have to be the same as your first impression.”

“How do you always make this more stressful?”

Lou laughed. “I’m not trying to. I shouldn’t have brought it up. But it’s okay for things to change as you get to know each other.”

Amita raised her eyebrows. “That doesn’t just apply to me and dating,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“She didn’t make a good first impression on any of us,” she said. “I already told you I’m going out with her again. I had a good time. We’ll figure it out. But it’s not good for the bakery to pretend that they aren’t there, like, two blocks up the road.”

“I already talked to Debbie about it,” Lou agreed. “Daphne’s coming over next week to discuss a daily order.”

“Really?”

“I mean, no guarantees Debbie will be nice. But yeah, they’re going to talk.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“You’ll consider not being a dick?”

Lou gave a heavy show of a sigh. “I’ll consider it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't mean to be dramatic but ........ I love Amita
> 
>  
> 
> hey due to Me Not Saving My Work there will be no Friday update because the computer ate it. back to the bullshit Monday :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello three people who read this, I like you, sorry not to update Friday - I force-shut-down my computer and hadn't saved the document, and autosave did me no favors. (this is what we would describe as "my own damn fault." and it was ok; I didn't lose that much.) but I have a couple chapters written now and am back on the wagon.

Debbie made the order: four cupcakes, flavor unspecified, Wednesday through Sunday. She and Lou looked over the early ones carefully. Most of them looked reasonably attractive, more or less domed and adequately decorated, with an over-generous shaving of zest over the lemon cupcakes and an over-generous shaving of chocolate over the chocolate cupcakes and an over-generous, or perhaps perfectly appropriate, sprinkling of crumbled cookies over the chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting. That said, Lou couldn’t help noticing that the frosting on all the cupcakes was oddly flat, and she had the sneaking suspicion that Rose was starting to frost in the center and working outward rather than building to a point. It was hardly Lou’s primary concern, since the cupcakes were clearly labeled as coming from Toussaint, and the people who ordered them weren’t in a position to be picky about how they were decorated, but a small part of her wanted to go show Rose how much perkier, and probably easier, it could be. It certainly wasn’t Lou’s responsibility—Rose taking a job she didn’t actually have the training to do was on Rose—but god, the girl could benefit from some basics.

Debbie willingly acknowledged that customers were glad to see cupcakes from Toussaint in the case, and even on the first day, some of them sold. But that wasn’t Debbie’s problem: Debbie’s problem was that the order was usually late. While the cupcakes were supposed to arrive in the fifteen minutes before the bakery opened, Rose usually ran them over in the first hour of the day, accompanied by a profuse apology. “But if you have to apologize for the same thing every day,” said Debbie, and she made an expressive gesture. Still, they were selling, and Debbie would have lived with the delay.

What Debbie couldn’t live with was the day Daphne brought the late cupcakes over instead of Rose. “I’m so sorry,” Daphne said, bringing the cupcakes around behind the counter an hour after Blue Rabbit opened one Friday. “I can’t believe Rose didn’t have these over here already. She’s trying really hard, but you know, she’s kind of a mess sometimes.”

“She said it like I was going to fucking commiserate!” Debbie practically shouted, standing by the table where Lou was putting the cream cheese crumb coat on a cardamom cake. “I mean, first of all, badmouthing your employees to your clients looks bad. I mean, if even _you_ don’t think your business is good—you know? But what a _dick_. If your people are having trouble, that’s _your_ problem! She’s the one who should be doing something about this, and blaming her employee to get out of taking the blame herself—we’re giving this woman _money_ , Lou!”

Lou didn’t answer while she set the cake in the fridge and grabbed a set of new rounds, to be sure Debbie was done talking. It was true that Debbie would never have been caught dead talking about Tammy or Amita this way with a client; Lou had been around long enough to know that this wouldn’t happen in any functional kitchen. She looked up to see how Amita was reacting, but she was doing her work, not watching Debbie. “Did you say anything?” Lou asked.

“Uh, yeah, I said something. Took her outside and everything. I made it sound like advice, in case she’d be more responsive to that than to me pointing out that she’s a piece of shit.”

Lou looked at Amita again, but this time it was a pointed glance her way for Debbie’s benefit.

“Fine,” Debbie said, “that she was _acting_ like a piece of shit.”

“You don’t have to hold back on my account,” Amita called. “I’ve been in there while she was trying to run the place. I don’t love it. Don’t get me wrong, I think she can improve, but she definitely might need some help.”

“Well, then,” said Lou. “Was she responsive?”

Debbie rolled her eyes. “How should I know? I did my part.”

“Well, did she say, Fuck you, stay in your lane, or did she say, Makes sense, thanks for the tip?”

“Fine,” Debbie said. “She was responsive, okay? Gears turned in her head and everything.”

“Okay, honey. Ready to go back out and face the customers?”

“Fuck off,” said Debbie, but her tone was good-natured. “Are you insinuating that you want me to do my job?”

“I want you to do whatever makes you happy, darling, as long as it pays my rent.”

Debbie sighed and turned to leave.

“Hey,” Lou called after her.

“What?”

“It was good of you to say something.”

Debbie made a face.

“I’m _proud_ of you,” Lou said. She used the mushiest voice she could manage to disguise that it was true. Debbie would know.

“Jesus,” Debbie answered, and she went back to work.

“Sorry about that,” Lou said to Amita; it seemed like the kind of conversation they should have had by themselves, even though really, it wasn’t any different from plenty of others.

Amita just laughed at her. “Look, I’m glad Debbie brought it up. I’m not going to get into this kind of thing with Daphne, but it’s great that someone is offering to help her.”

Lou sighed. “You’re calling me out, Amita.”

“Hmm?”

“I was thinking about how I ought to go check whether Rose needs any help.”

“What kind of help?”

Lou laughed. “Nothing difficult. Probably I’d just say she could come by if she had questions or anything. I don’t know, maybe she’s fine, but she doesn’t know how to pipe frosting onto a cupcake.”

“I’d tell you to be nice, but seriously, they’re all so sad!”

“They could have gotten weeks more work out of you.” Lou shrugged. “I mean, Debbie would say that’s what she gets for leaving before she was fully trained, but every time I look at those cupcakes, I just want someone to offer to help her.”

“I think that would be okay,” Amita said. “I think that would be nice.”

Lou sighed. “This Toussaint business,” she said, “it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk how this chapter got so shmoopy but we're going with it


	12. Chapter 12

Lou stopped by Toussaint that Friday after parking at Blue Rabbit and sending Debbie inside. Amita could hold down the fort until she arrived, but if she was being honest, she’d have acknowledged that stopping by on her way into the bakery gave her an easy excuse to leave. The place was already open; Blue Rabbit opened relatively late for a bakery since most people weren’t picking up cake for breakfast. “Hey!” Constance called when she went inside. “Baker!”

“Yeah,” said Lou, and she gestured to the doorway back to the kitchen, “can I just—”

“Go for it,” said Constance, waving her back. Lou thanked her with a nod and walked into the kitchen.

Alone in the spacious kitchen, with just an empty cupcake tray and a half-sheet of cupcakes in front of her, Rose looked almost comically small. She didn’t notice Lou at first, and when she did, she jumped.

“Lou!” she said. “Are you here for your order? I’m getting it done right now. I just need some—” Her hand was shaking as she reached for the tub of shaved chocolate under the table.

“No,” said Lou, “no, no hurry, you’re fine. I mean, I’ll take it, since I’m here, but that isn’t why I came. I’m just—checking in.”

“Checking in?”

“You know, I wanted to see how you were doing.” Lou felt ridiculous. “I think I heard that Daphne doesn’t have a lot of background in this part of the work, and I thought—”

“You thought?”

“Well, I don’t know a thing about gluten-free baking, and I don’t know much about vegan baking, but I thought that if you had any questions about the other side of things, you know, decorating, managing the kitchen—I just wanted to let you know that you can come by and ask anytime.”

Rose brought a hand up and just stopped herself from running it over her hair. “Are you unhappy with your order? I know the other day the vanilla was—”

“No,” Lou interrupted, feeling privately that this favor was exhausting and probably not at all worth it. Rose was too much of a mouse to stop by the bakery she’d quit with a question. But her sense of obligation, at least, would be met. “The order’s fine. It’s just a friendly offer. No teeth. Really.”

“Oh,” said Rose. She opened the tub and was about to reach in when she remembered herself and grabbed a glove. Lou wondered whether the glove was just for her benefit, but she wasn’t especially worried; chocolate shaved that small would absolutely melt on Rose’s bare hands, and having to wash your hands an extra time was worse punishment than the wrath of the health department. “Thank you.” Having dropped a stripe of chocolate onto four of the cupcakes, she then used the gloved hand to set them in a box. They must have been doing, or else anticipating, a heavy cupcake business, because they had four-cupcake inserts to make sure they didn’t touch each other in there. “Here you go,” she said.

“Thanks,” Lou said. “And I’m serious. Happy to answer any questions if you have them, or you can just stop by. You know our hours.”

“Yeah,” said Rose, and the smile might have been genuine, “thanks.”

That afternoon, Daphne Kluger walked into the kitchen. “You trying to poach my baker?”

Lou glanced up at her and back down at the baby shower order she was decorating in yellow and purple. “Yep,” she said, “that’s me.”

“I’m serious,” said Daphne. “I know it’s hard to find staff. You’re a woman short. It’s not a ridiculous question.”

“You think I’m trying to hire someone who quit after two weeks the last time?” Lou couldn’t blame Daphne for doubting Rose, given the circumstances of Rose’s change in employment, but she wasn’t losing sleep over it. “Honey, I have craigslist.”

“ _Oh_ kay,” Daphne said, clearly annoyed, probably by the condescending pet name; Lou could hardly blame her. “Then why were you in my kitchen this morning?”

This was a good time to pull a new tub of frosting out of the walk-in, not because she needed it urgently, but because this was a good time to leave the conversation and go into the walk-in. “Just letting Rose know she could come by here if she had any questions, and we’d be willing to help her figure things out,” Lou said, and she punctuated it by letting the door fall shut behind her.

She took her time pulling out the oldest tub of Swiss buttercream, but Daphne was still there, looking at the door, when she came out. “Are you serious?” she said.

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“I mean, I don’t know. Maybe?”

Lou chuckled. “Yes, I’m serious. I mean, if she had too many questions I might impose a time limit, but why not?”

“Uh, because she left you short a baker?”

“Seriously, Daphne, it’ll be nice to get another, but we’re doing fine.”

“Okay,” Daphne said, “well…that’s really nice of you. Thank you.”

Lou’s glance up was utterly unimpressed. “It is very literally no problem.”

“Well, still, thank you,” Daphne said. “I wasn’t sure if we had some kind of blood feud thing going on or something.”

Lou laughed without looking up. “I’m not really the blood feud type,” she said. “And if I were, we wouldn’t buy cupcakes from your place every day that we're open.”

“Okay,” said Daphne. “But you guys don’t like me.”

“Amita does.”

Daphne blushed and turned to Amita. “Sorry,” she said, suddenly sounding vastly more normal, “is this weird?”

Amita had been absolutely _glaring_ at Lou, but she looked perfectly pleasant by the time she was facing Daphne “You’re being a little bit weird, yeah,” Amita said, but she couldn’t really sustain the mocking tone. “Nobody here is trying to hurt you. We have better things to worry about.”

“Yeah,” said Daphne. “Thank you. Like where to have dinner tomorrow?”

Amita smiled. “That would be one example,” she said. “I’ll have to devote a lot of time to it.”

Shyness made Daphne look like a different person entirely. “I’ll text you. Thank you both.” She waved at Lou, who, with a piping bag in both hands, did not wave back but nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you're trying to be cool but you end up being nice


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey, three people who read this, how goes? I got on an airplane (computerless) Friday morning and forgot to update in advance Thursday night. please accept my restitution for the missed chapter in the form of [the most Debbie song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WauMPwyW5s) (except for all the bits about how honest she is lol) from the set list of the concert(s - same show, two nights) I went to this weekend, [the most Lou song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWYpGCNUkis) from the set list, and [the most (pre-movie) Lou/Debbie song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6A8T6qWPBo) from the set list. (I'm like still debating probably all of those. And Amita is my fav of course, but I can't fit any one of them to her.)

When Lou and Debbie got to Nine Ball’s that afternoon, Daphne was there, and she waved them over to join her. Lou, with her hand on Debbie’s back, steered her toward them without giving her much of a choice. In fairness, they hadn’t actually socialized in a little while, and Daphne had no way of knowing that Debbie had been calling her names at high volume just that morning.

“Sit down,” Daphne said. “I owe you both a drink.”

“Oh, no, we—”

“Seriously, you’ve both been so kind, really, absolute lifesavers. It’s the least I can do.”

Debbie often had no problem being ungracious, so Lou looked to her for direction. But to her surprise, Debbie smiled politely and pulled out a chair. “So,” she said, “things are going well?”

“Oh, you know,” said Daphne, “we’re still figuring it out, but there’s at least a little progress. We have a couple of daily grocery store orders now, so that’s something. And we got a call today about whether we do wedding cakes.”

“Well, do you?” Lou couldn’t imagine Rose managing to make a wedding cake without crying.

“I’m not sure! It seems like a lot—I’m not sure whether Rose is cut out for it just yet. And a lot of overhead, making things for a tasting, especially in terms of staff time. But I’d like the business, obviously. I just have to think through whether it’ll work for us.”

“If you come by tomorrow,” Lou said, “I can talk you through how it works on the kitchen side. And if Rose can spare a few hours this weekend, we have a wedding on Saturday, so I could go over some things with her, if you want. Obviously we’re also decorating cakes all the time, if you just want her to learn the basics there. That wasn’t really what she was doing before she left.”

“You’ll just train her for free?”

Lou laughed. “You’re training her and paying her. Anyway, on the wedding cake, she’ll absolutely have to stay out of the way, but otherwise, why not? I already told her she can come by anytime. It gets a little repetitive decorating cakes all day. She’ll liven it up.”

Tammy walked in then, but she stopped at the counter to talk to Nine Ball. Lou became more aware that she didn’t have a drink at the same moment that she thought she ought to avoid ordering one. Fortunately, Daphne had no such scruples. “What are you drinking?” she asked.

“Nine Ball isn’t going to pay attention to you,” Lou predicted. “She knows what we want, though.”

Daphne walked to the counter, and sure enough, Nine Ball kept right on talking to Tammy. They were leaning together over the bar, their faces only about six inches apart. She actually turned her head long enough to shoot Daphne a quick “Hey” before turning back to Tammy with a sweet smile.

Debbie’s smile, Lou noticed, was a little less sweet. “You enjoying this?”

Daphne had tried saying “Hey, can I get,” had tried reaching over the table to Nine Ball and Tammy, and had tried Nine Ball’s name. She was still standing unattended at the counter.

“I think she’s doing this for my benefit,” Debbie answered. Tammy and Nine Ball weren’t exceptionally demonstrative, as a rule—Lou hadn’t seen them touch any more than she and Debbie did—and sometimes greeted each other with little more than a wave. Lou doubted very much that she was doing it for Debbie, but it could certainly be a joke. “I’m impressed that she got Tammy to play along, though.”

Nine Ball turned slowly to Daphne. “You want something?” she said.

“Uh, yeah, some drinks?”

“Well you’ve come to the right place, boo.” Tammy laughed. Work friendships were a strange thing, Debbie thought. She’d spent hours every day with Tammy for years, but she’d never once seen her laugh like she was doing right now.

“Just whatever Lou and Debbie like,” Daphne said, and she must have closed out earlier because she set a card on the counter now. “Thanks.”

“I got you.”

“Has she,” Debbie murmured, “ever talked to a person?”

“You’re going to have to stop this eventually.”

“I can be very persistent.”

“That’s one way of putting it. But I’m serious. Besides the work thing, she’s dating Amita.”

Debbie sighed. “I just need her to do, like, one good thing. Every interaction I’ve had with her so far, she’s been awful.”

“She’s buying you a drink _right now_. She listened to what you said. Come on, baby, you know you love people who listen to what you say.”

“They’re so hard to come by,” Debbie agreed. “Do you actually like her?”

“I think she’s fairly ridiculous, but it’s more expedient to like her. And I do believe that eventually, she won’t have to try so hard. My current behavior is just—preparation for a future where she’s mellowed out.”

Debbie lay her head on Lou’s shoulder. “Being mean isn’t as fun when you’re being reasonable.”

Lou kissed her head. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Daphne came back to them with two pint glasses in hand. “I don’t know whose is whose,” she said.  

“Neither do I,” said Debbie, taking the one closer to her. They had usual orders, but these weren’t them, and they tended to let Nine Ball bring them whatever. “Thanks.” She took a sip. “Nope,” she said immediately, “this is yours.”

Lou had taken a sip of the other beer, and it just tasted like fruit. “Yeah,” she said, “yep.” She handed over the drink in her hand and took Debbie’s. It was bitter and somehow rich. “Oh, much better.” She raised the glass to Nine Ball, who was watching them with great amusement. “Thanks, Daphne.”

“Cheers,” Daphne said, and she actually clinked their glasses with hers; Lou reflected that this should not have surprised her, but her thoughts about it were not entirely charitable. “So tell me about yourselves. How did you find yourselves making cakes? And selling cakes,” she added to Debbie.

“Oh, you know,” said Lou, “all children, except one, grow up.” But they told her—a shortened version—and she asked follow-up questions like it was a conversation and everything, like they were new friends spending time together, and maybe they were.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is still going I should have planned lmao

Rose came by. Lou wasn’t sure she’d actually expected her to take the offer, but she knocked on the doorway one Wednesday morning—Toussaint must have been closed on Wednesdays—and slipped inside. “All right,” said Lou, “what do you need?”

“Oh, God,” said Rose. Lou laughed, but she tried not to be mean about it.

“Well, if you’re hoping to get some decorating lessons, you’ll want to hang out over here,” she said. “If you have any questions, ask them, but maybe ask them about four cakes from now. Are you getting into cakes at Toussaint?” She hadn’t looked up from where her piping bag was circling the edge of the cake.

“Well, Daphne wants—she’d like to.”

“All right. Have you ever frosted a cake?”

Rose shook her head.

“You’re in the right place.” Lou wished she’d forced Amita to make this offer, but if she and Amita suddenly switched places now, it would be quite conspicuous. No one should have put Rose in this position, but it was too late now. “I don’t have a ton of time to go over these ones—we’re still filling the case, since it’s the beginning of the week.” It would have been much easier on Lou to work Tuesdays and take Sundays off if she had the time, but she’d yoked her schedule to Debbie’s, at Debbie’s request. The compromise was that they came in early Wednesday mornings—the case couldn’t just be empty—and they kept any uncut cakes at the end of Sunday to hold over until they could be replaced on Tuesday morning. Lou hated having three-day-old cakes in the cold case, and if she had to come in Tuesday to prepare a big order, she also got part of the case out of the way. But this hadn’t been one of those weeks. “So watch for these few, all right, and I can talk you through some in a bit.”

Rose, predictably, didn’t say a word after being told not to. Lou knocked out enough cakes to have one of everything fresh in the cold case and started on the duplicates. “All right,” said Lou, “I’m just going to assume you don’t know anything. It’s faster than trying to guess. Okay, so here we have the layers of our cake. You do know that.” This cake was a special order, a chocolate cake with ganache between the layers and ganache for frosting, which was a bit of a pain. She should have started with a different frosting. She would do an almond cake next. “I’m guessing Daphne has no idea what kind of shit she needs to buy to be able to make a cake. She can come over if she needs help, but like, a lot of these things are cheap, and having to wash them too often is a real waste of time. Okay. So you have four layers. You need to stick them together.” She talked through the process as she went. “This one’s filled with ganache, so we’ve got a piping bag of ganache here”—given their cupcake order from Toussaint, she was sure Rose at least knew how to put together and fill a piping bag—“and I’m going to put a circle of ganache around the outside and spiral in. Always outside in,” she added, remembering the cupcakes. “That way you know it’ll end up balanced. It doesn’t matter so much here because you aren’t going to see it, but it’s definitely faster. And that’s that—some of the other ones are a little more complicated. We’ll do one next. So we’re going to do that for every layer, again…and again…all right. Four layers, stuck together, that’s a start.” She narrated the application of the crumb coat and put the cake in the fridge. “We especially need it to set with ganache,” she said. “That shit is too soft for frosting cakes.”

“Then why do you frost cakes with it?”

“I mean, it’s also good. All right. Next one is an almond plum cake. You want to do it?”

“Only if you tell me exactly what to do.”

“Oh, I’m not wasting good product. I’m not that helpful. Can you get the oldest plum compote from the walk-in?” Lou pulled a tub of buttercream up onto the counter and fetched clean piping bags and offsets. Then she pulled the cake layers and put a round of cardboard on the cake stand. She handed Rose a piping bag with a wide tip. The rest of this day was going to move at a different pace from the one she was used to.

Rose used a bit of frosting to adhere the bottom layer to the cake stand. So far, so good. “All right, now, with the almond, we’re not filling it with frosting, we’re filling it with plum, but since the plum is pretty wet, we need a layer of frosting over the cake so it won’t soak in. You can just put a bit on there with a small offset and spread it around—you’re going to need a little more than that. Good, okay, get it covered. All right. Now a ring of frosting around the edge to hold it in place. Okay. Then we need the plum—you might want a spoon for that. All right, yeah, probably no more or you’ll overfill it. No, that’s fine. You can put the next layer on now.” She wasn’t sure what was obvious and what was rote; maybe Rose was doing very well. She managed the next two with no instructions but “same thing,” and though Lou had to repeat several times the need to get all the corners in the crumb coat, she managed.

“Now we’re going to let this one sit in the freezer and get to work on this chocolate one. I’m getting very hot water and a very clean towel—the hot water is to clean off the spatulas, but ganache doesn’t like water. I mean, most frosting doesn’t like water, but chocolate is pickier. And then honestly—I don’t do the ganache all at once like the others because it’s so soft, but still, we’re going to start with a pile over the top.” Lou showed her how to work it down, added in frosting on the sides—“this would be a lot harder with buttercream, so you want to start with more, but it might take you some trial and error with your frostings; I sure don’t know shit about vegan frosting”—and had Rose pay special attention to how she managed the corners around the top edge. But she knew, trading out the cakes, that this was not going to go well.

The problem wasn’t that Rose would be unable to do it the first time or unable to learn; the problem was that learning was going to be messy. Lou wasn’t this good at managing her feelings. “It’s probably not going to be very fun,” she said. She guided Rose’s hand at times; at other times she pointed to particular areas to clear up and offered an approach. Rose did not appear to be enjoying the process, but nor did she stop. When the cake was covered in frosting, Lou gave her particular help smoothing it out, and when she pressed a little too hard and built up a new rim of buttercream around the edge, Lou suggested putting it back in the fridge.

“Will it help?”

“It might,” Lou said honestly. “It’ll make it harder to mess with more than the surface of the frosting.”

“Oh. All right. That does seem helpful. Then what?”

“Then we decorate the other cake,” Lou said. “You should be able to do what you like there, unless Daphne has a particular idea in mind. Or if it’s a wedding. Some of those people really fucking know what they want. But for the just, you know, the house look.” She showed Rose on the top edge how to do her preferred style of borders—Lou’s kitchen, Lou’s rules—and applied the bottom border efficiently. “Some people put, like, little dots on the sides. I don’t. That’s it. A cake.” The order hadn’t specified any writing or sprinkles, so Lou boxed it up and put it in the walk-in with the order sheet taped to the front before turning back to Rose to say, “Your turn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friday's update should pick up right where this one left off but the whole thing seemed like a chapter length inconsistent with the rest of this fic


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually updating on Friday like I said I would? it's more likely than you think

“Right,” said Rose, looking at the cake in front of her, covered in a thin crumb coat and nothing else.

“That frosting won’t stay frozen for long,” Lou said, but she tried to sound playful rather than annoyed, even if she wasn’t the playful type. She took a large offset spatula and plopped a healthy scoop of buttercream on the top; then she handed the offset to Rose.

“Right,” she said, pressing it down a little on the frosting and rotating the cake, “okay, and it’s going to go down over the sides. And that’s all right.”

“That’s fine. We’ll use it to frost the sides of the cake.”

“Right. Okay.” She turned the spatula vertical and the cake spun a bit. “But it’s not—how do you make it all go where you want?”

“Practice,” said Lou. “And patience. You can add more, too; you don’t just have to work with what’s there.”

“Okay,” Rose said, and she tentatively added some frosting to the spatula. In a couple rotations of the cake stand, the sides were covered. “So there’s frosting _on_ all of it now.”

“Good,” said Lou, “now…”

“Now it has to look. Well. Not like a disaster.”

“The frosting is a little thin over here,” Lou said, “so before you get too concerned with making it smooth—”

“Right,” said Rose. “Okay. Best look that over. More frosting over here…and, god, just go?”

Lou chuckled. It was a difficult balance to strike. It would be possible to spend hours on a cake, perfecting, slowly peeling off too much frosting and having to start again, especially for someone like Rose without the technique to achieve smooth surfaces or the experience to judge when it was done well enough. Lou tried to help, showing her how to remove the spatula gently without leaving a seam—though it took Rose a few tries—and re-angling the offset when Lou was worried the frosting would get too thin. “You can put it in the freezer for a minute,” she said, “and use a hot spatula, if there are a couple of bits you want to get. It does help. But I’m just going to take this from you—” she reached for the spatula in Rose’s hand and cleaned up a couple segments of the cake. They were selling this one in the bakery, and if there was a problematic spot, well, Debbie would put it at the back and sell that slice first. She wasn’t going to have the time for perfect cakes today. She did put the cake in the freezer before Rose applied the border; she wanted to be able to remove it easily if anything went horribly wrong. “Okay,” she said, “two more. We’ll do the same kind this time.” Lou and Rose cleaned up the station, just holding onto the piping bag of buttercream for the cake in the freezer. They pulled that one out to finish it up before moving on. They did have to remove a bit of border at one point: while Rose was piping around the bottom of the cake, Lou discussed the pros and cons of using the bottom border to cover the cardboard holding the cake in various situations, and as the stand rotated, Lou realized Rose had taken the lesson to heart: the border was shaped like a wave up and down over the base. Lou chuckled. “You do have to pick one, though,” she said. “I’ll show you how to get it off.” While the cake sat in the freezer, Lou, who did not want to ask any questions about Toussaint, instead cleaned the cake stand and told Rose that she had a wedding cake this weekend. “If you can manage to take some time in the middle of Saturday,” she said, “you can learn about tiers.”

Rose looked terrified.

“You will under no circumstances touch the cake.”

“Oh.” She relaxed. She even chuckled. “That might be good.”

“It can’t hurt,” said Lou, “to see what goes into it. The more you know when Daphne Kluger comes up with her next big idea, the better.”

“Oh, don’t even say something like that.”

“You’d better be prepared. All right, now, we should be able to get this border off.” She was reaching into the freezer, and she set the cake on the stand. She took the small offset in her own hand; Rose could solve her own problems on the next cake. Surely there would be more problems. “With any luck…you should just be able…to pry it off. You might have to take the whole thing, and you might have to smooth it over when you do.” The pitcher of hot water was probably only warm by now; she ran the little spatula under the sink on hot and dried it with a clean towel, then ran it over the base of the cake where the border had been removed. Good enough. “Try again. You do want to mostly cover it, but with enough room to be able to get it right off of here onto something pretty.” In a perfect world, they’d have plenty of decorative rotating cake stands, but that was for another day.

With those instructions, Rose did quite well. She would have to learn to judge for herself, but—well, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe they would always use a base that stuck out past the edge of the cake, which was the best choice if you were boxing the cake up—it protected the sides of the cake from the sides of the box. Not always; it wouldn’t work for a tiered cake. But that was a mistake you wouldn’t make more than once, Lou thought. And maybe Daphne would want something else entirely. Rose, if she could follow directions, might be exactly as much baker as Daphne Kluger wanted.

Rose did both of the next two cakes, the birthday cake cakes. She did well enough; practice would help, but she remembered most of the process, and what she was told to do on the first cake, she knew to do on the next—though she always, always asked first. She asked, after almost every step, whether that was right. She asked how many sprinkles to put on the top of the cakes—not a ridiculous question, but a hard one to answer. Lou hoped it would go a bit more easily for Rose in her own kitchen, though realistically she knew it wouldn’t the first couple times, at least. Lou had to take her kitchen back in order to get her whole day’s work done, but Rose stayed for a little while, watching Lou work, and once or twice, she even opened her mouth.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's a short chapter and it's a last chapter

There were eight of them at Nine Ball’s, all around one little bar table, since they’d piled in haphazardly a few at a time. Daphne, Rose, and Constance were there, and Amita had gone over to join them when her shift ended; Lou and Debbie had arrived together; Nine Ball had pulled up a chair; and finally, with Blue Rabbit closed, Tammy had joined the rest of them. Their drinks barely fit on the small round table, which Lou, from where she was sitting, would have had to lean to reach. Apparently they were a crew now, the people on Front Street who were free at 4 PM, and it felt natural enough, though Lou wasn’t sure how anyone got used to Constance. In the bakery, she was a little weird, but she seemed to get the work done. Here, though? She was doing card tricks on the table, Amita leaning in to watch her with genuine delight, Daphne with a hand on Amita’s back and an impressed lift of her eyebrows when the trick actually worked out. Nine Ball had Debbie and Tammy in stitches talking about a shouting match that had broken out in the bar last night. Rose was watching the card tricks inattentively, while Daphne appeared to have realized that the conversation over by Nine Ball might be more entertaining than hers and turned most of her attention that way. Lou was holding her drink on her lap—too much work to keep moving it back and forth from the table—listening to Nine Ball while watching Constance’s hands or usually, mostly, watching Debbie laugh.

“I have some news,” Daphne said when Debbie, Tammy, and Nine Ball had gotten themselves together.

Rose looked to Daphne wide-eyed; Amita turned to her right away. “Yeah?” said Debbie.

“We made money last month. Toussaint. Not a lot, but you know, a positive number.”

Amita and Constance didn’t look surprised; from the rest of them, there was a chorus of congratulations. “That’s great,” Debbie said sincerely.

“That was fast,” said Nine Ball. “You’ve been open how long?”

“About ten months.”

“Damn,” said Lou. “Good work.”

“Thanks,” said Daphne, who was basking in the praise. “I was pretty pleased. I couldn’t have done it without you, though.” She was looking at Amita, but she was replying to Lou, who figured the “you” was inclusive. Amita deserved more of it, that was certain. “I feel like I can, like, take one single nap now.”

“Or have a second drink?” Debbie said. “I’ve got the next round.”

Lou was a little surprised; she scratched Debbie’s shoulder lightly with the hand that rested on the back of her chair.

“Thank you,” said Daphne, sounding surprised as well. “Seriously, that’s so nice.”

“Hey,” said Debbie, “what are friends for?”

Daphne’s grin went wide. “We’re friends?”

“I mean, we don’t have to be, if you don’t want.”

“I do,” said Daphne. “I absolutely want to be friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks, 3 people who read this! live good lifes

**Author's Note:**

> This'll go up M/W/F for...I'm not sure how long yet


End file.
